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takyon writes:

Antipsychotic Drugs Don't Ease ICU Delirium Or Dementia

Powerful drugs that have been used for decades to treat delirium are ineffective for that purpose, according to a study published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

[...] "In some surveys up to 70 percent of patients [in the ICU] get these antipsychotics," says Dr. E. Wesley "Wes" Ely, an intensive care specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. They're prescribed by "very good doctors at extremely good medical centers," he says. "Millions of people worldwide are getting these drugs to treat their delirium." [...] Patients with delirium are often confused and incoherent and sometimes can suffer hallucinations. This condition can lead to long-term cognitive problems, including a form of dementia.

[...] Ely and colleagues at 16 U.S. medical centers decided to put antipsychotic drugs to a rigorous test. They divided nearly 600 patients who were suffering from delirium into three groups. One group got the powerful antipsychotic haloperidol. A second group got ziprasidone, which is a related medication from a class of drugs called "atypical antipsychotics." A third group got a placebo.

"The three groups did exactly the same," Ely says. There was no change in the duration of delirium, or the number of coma-free days. "They stayed in the ICU the same amount of time. They stayed on the mechanical ventilator the same amount of time. They didn't get out of the hospital any sooner." "There's not a shred of evidence in this entire investigation that this aggressive approach to treating delirium with antipsychotics, which is commonplace and usual care, did anything for the patients," he concludes.

Also at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Haloperidol and Ziprasidone for Treatment of Delirium in Critical Illness (open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1808217) (DX)

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell nabbed a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, as we learned last month. Bell Burnell won for her 1967 discovery of the fast-spinning neutron stars known as pulsars, and for her five decades of scientific leadership after that epic find.

The rest of the 2019 winners were announced today (Oct. 17), and they include a pioneer in the field of multi-messenger astronomy, gravitational-wave researchers and scientists investigating the nature of gravity and the quantum realm.

Multi-messenger astronomy refers to the use of different types of information to probe the same cosmic object or phenomenon. The field was born last year, when researchers observed the aftermath of an epic neutron-star collision via both electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves, the ripples in space-time first predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago.

[...] The 2019 Breakthrough Prize features seven $3 million awards — four in life sciences, two in fundamental physics (including the "Special Breakthrough" won by Bell Burnell) and one in mathematics. The six $100,000 "New Horizons" prizes and a $400,000 "Breakthrough Junior Prize" bring the total purse to $22 million. The winners will be honored Nov. 4 during a ceremony at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, that will be hosted by actor Pierce Brosnan.

Source: https://www.space.com/42168-breakthrough-prize-pulsars-multimessenger-astronomy.html

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Al Jazeera:

South Korea is in the grip of a "spycam" epidemic with covert footage of sex, nudity, and urination posted online in what amounts to a "social death penalty" for thousands of female victims.

The footage may be taken surreptitiously by boyfriends or captured on covert devices as small as car keys. Daily camera checks are now part of life for cleaners in many public toilets.

The spy camera phenomenon has reached such epidemic proportions in tech-savvy South Korea that tens of thousands of women have taken to the streets to march for action.

Srsly?

Previously: South Koreans Protest Spy Cam Pornography

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ZDNet:

At Open Source Summit Europe in Scotland, Linus Torvalds is meeting with Linux's top 40 or so developers at the Maintainers' Summit. This is his first step back in taking over Linux's reins.

A little over a month ago, Torvalds stepped back from running the Linux development community. In a note to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), Torvalds said, "I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely. I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately."

That time is over. Torvalds is back.

He's a quick study if it only took him a month to learn how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately.

See also: Linus Torvalds is back at Linux while GNU's Stallman unveils a "kindness" policy

Previously: Linus Torvalds Taking a Break From Linux Kernel Maintainership
More on Linus Torvalds Taking a Break From Linux Kernel Maintainership
Eric S. Raymond Speaks in Regards to the Linux Code of Conduct [Updated]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Hack on 8 adult websites exposes oodles of intimate user data

A recent hack of eight poorly secured adult websites has exposed megabytes of personal data that could be damaging to the people who shared pictures and other highly intimate information on the online message boards. Included in the leaked file are (1) IP addresses that connected to the sites, (2) user passwords protected by a four-decade-old cryptographic scheme, (3) names, and (4) 1.2 million unique email addresses, although it's not clear how many of the addresses legitimately belonged to actual users.

[...] Besides wifelovers.com, the other affected sites are: asiansex4u.com, bbwsex4u.com, indiansex4u.com, nudeafrica.com, nudelatins.com, nudemen.com, and wifeposter.com. The sites offer a variety of pictures that members say show their spouses. It's not clear that all of the affected spouses gave their consent to have their intimate images made available online.

[...] In many respects, the most recent breach is more limited than the hack of Ashley Madison. Whereas the 100GB of data exposed by the Ashley Madison hack included users' street addresses, partial payment-card numbers, phone numbers, and records of almost 10 million transactions, the newer hack doesn't involve any of those details. And even if all 1.2 million unique email addresses turn out to belong to real users, that's still considerably fewer than the 36 million dumped by Ashley Madison.

[...] Still, a quick examination of the exposed database demonstrated to me the potential damage it could inflict. Users who posted to the site were allowed to publicly link their accounts to one email address while associating a different, private email address to their accounts. A Web search of some of these private email addresses quickly returned accounts on Instagram, Amazon, and other big sites that gave the users' first and last names, geographic location, and information about hobbies, family members, and other personal details. The name one user gave wasn't his real name, but it did match usernames he used publicly on a half-dozen other sites.

[...] Also concerning is the exposed password data, which is protected by a hashing algorithm so weak and obsolete that it took password cracking expert Jens Steube just seven minutes to recognize the hashing scheme and decipher a given hash.

[...] Known as Descrypt, the hash function was created in 1979 and is based on the old Data Encryption Standard. Descrypt provided improvements designed at the time to make hashes less susceptible to cracking. For instance, it added cryptographic salt to prevent identical plaintext inputs from having the same hash. It also subjected plaintext inputs to multiple iterations to increase the time and computation required to crack the outputted hashes. But by 2018 standards, Descrypt is woefully inadequate. It provides just 12 bits of salt, uses only the first eight characters of a chosen password, and suffers other more-nuanced limitations.

"The algorithm is quite literally ancient by modern standards, designed 40 years ago, and fully deprecated 20 years ago," Jeremi M. Gosney, a password security expert and CEO of password-cracking firm Terahash, told Ars. "It is salted, but the salt space is very small, so there will be thousands of hashes that share the same salt, which means you're not getting the full benefit from salting."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

New York City Police Department Commissioner James P. O'Neill suspended the use of some bodycam devices "effective immediately" after one of the city's cameras exploded over the weekend.

The NYPD said it was made "aware of a possible product defect" on Saturday when an officer said his Vievu model LE-5 camera caught fire. The officer removed the device before it exploded, and no injuries were reported.

"Last night, an officer retrieved a body-cam for deployment on a midnight tour and noticed there was smoke exiting from the bottom portal and immediately removed it," the NYPD said in a statement. "After it was safely removed, the device exploded."

Investigators said "the incident revealed a potential for the battery inside the camera to ignite," according to the statement.

[...] "Out of an abundance of caution, the Police Commissioner has directed that the continued use and distribution of the LE-5 model cameras be suspended effective immediately," the statement said. "All officers assigned LE-5 cameras were instructed to immediately remove the cameras and bring them back to their commands."

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/york-police-department-halts-bodycams-explodes/story?id=58658403

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

WASHINGTON — As NASA evaluates proposals for commercially developed small lunar landers, the agency is now seeking payloads that could fly on those spacecraft despite concerns from some scientists that they don't know if their experiments are compatible with those landers.

NASA released Oct. 18 a formal solicitation for "Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads" that seeks experiments for flight on lander missions procured by the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. NASA plans to select 8 to 12 experiments next year for launch no earlier than 2020, with an overall budget of between $24 and 36 million in the first year of the program.

In a statement, NASA said it's looking for payloads "that advance capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the moon." That includes, according to the solicitation, work by any of the agency's four science divisions, so-called "Strategic Knowledge Gaps" for human exploration and technologies needed for future lunar exploration.

"We are looking for ways to not only conduct lunar science but to also use the moon as a science platform to look back at the Earth, observe the sun, or view the vast universe," said Steve Clarke, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in the statement. "In terms of technology, we are interested in those instruments or systems that will help future missions — both human and robotic — explore the moon and feed forward to future Mars missions."

However, NASA's statement listed what it expects some of those first payloads to be: "On early missions, science instruments will likely gather data related to heat flow within the Moon's interior, solar wind and atmosphere as well as dust detection."

Source: https://spacenews.com/nasa-issues-call-for-payloads-to-go-on-commercial-lunar-landers/

Original Submission

martyb writes:

US air pollution deaths nearly halved between 1990 and 2010:

Air pollution in the U.S. has decreased since about 1990, and a new study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now shows that this air quality improvement has brought substantial public health benefits. The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, found that deaths related to air pollution were nearly halved between 1990 and 2010.

The team's analyses showed that deaths related to air pollution exposure in the U.S. decreased by about 47 percent, dropping from about 135,000 deaths in 1990 to 71,000 in 2010.

These improvements in air quality and public health in the U.S. coincided with increased federal air quality regulations, and have taken place despite increases in population, energy and electricity use, and vehicle miles traveled between 1990 and 2010.

"We've invested a lot of resources as a society to clean up our air," said Jason West, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and study co-author. "This study demonstrates that those changes have had a real impact with fewer people dying each year due to exposure to outdoor air pollution."

[...] Still, despite clear improvements, air pollution remains an important public health issue in the U.S. The estimated 71,000 deaths in 2010 translates to 1 of every 35 deaths in the U.S. -- that's as many deaths as we see from all traffic accidents and all gun shootings combined.

[...] "New federal policies curtailing air pollution regulations likely will slow the improvement in air quality or possibly make air quality worse."

Journal Reference: Yuqiang Zhang, et. al. Long-term trends in the ambient PM_2.5- and O₃-related mortality burdens in the United States under emission reductions from 1990 to 2010. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2018; 18 (20): 15003 DOI: 10.5194/acp-18-15003-2018

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Entire broadband industry sues Vermont to stop state net neutrality law

The nation's largest broadband industry lobby groups have sued Vermont to stop a state law that requires ISPs to follow net neutrality principles in order to qualify for government contracts.

The lawsuit^[pdf] was filed yesterday in US District Court in Vermont by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, the New England Cable & Telecommunications Association, and the American Cable Association (ACA), which represents small and mid-size cable companies.

CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom, and the ACA also previously sued California to stop a much stricter net neutrality law, but they're now expanding the legal battle to multiple states. These lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members.

While the California law applies to all consumer broadband providers, Vermont's law is narrower and may be more likely to survive legal challenge. Vermont's law creates a process in which ISPs can certify that they comply with net neutrality guidelines, and it says that state agencies may only buy Internet service from ISPs that obtain those certifications.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, also issued an executive order^[pdf] imposing similar requirements on state agencies. The broadband industry lawsuit asks the court to rule that both the Vermont law and executive order are preempted by federal law.

The lobby groups point to the Federal Communications Commission repeal of US-wide net neutrality rules because the FCC order claims the authority to preempt state net neutrality laws.

[...] The state law is also preempted because of "the inherently interstate nature" of broadband, the complaint said.

To get certified for state contracts, Vermont says that ISPs must demonstrate that they do not block or throttle lawful Internet traffic or engage in paid prioritization. The certification also prohibits ISPs from "engaging in deceptive or misleading marketing practices that misrepresent the treatment of Internet traffic or content to its customers." ISPs seeking certification also have to publicly disclose accurate information about their network management practices, network performance, and the commercial terms of their Internet service.

[...] The lawsuit could serve as a test case for other states that are attempting to regulate net neutrality indirectly through state contracts. Besides Vermont, the governors of Hawaii, Montana, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island have also issued executive orders to impose net neutrality rules on ISPs that provide Internet service to state government agencies.

Original Submission

MostCynical writes:

Sunday Times Driving reports under 50% of surveyed UK drivers know what a roundabout sign looks like, and only 68% knew what the speed bump sign means.

The survey was conducted by the Institute of Advanced Motorists, with 1,000 participants.

Only 32% of drivers knew you should allow at least a two-second time gap to the vehicle ahead when driving on a dry open road. It appears many motorists are conflating this with two car lengths in distance, as 53% of those surveyed responded with that answer.

[...] Younger motorists were the most likely to answer incorrectly, with 17 to 39 year-olds having the lowest correct answer percentage rates in 14 of the 23 questions, but older drivers didn't do very well either.

The Sunday Times article has an embedded googleforms survey, so you can test your knowledge of UK road rules.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In late 2017 California amended its labor laws to forbid employers from inquiring into previous compensation and to compel employers to provide candidates with pay range information upon reasonable request. I refer to Assembly Bills(AB) 168 and 2282, both of which passed and were approved by the Governor:

Assembly Bill 168 ("Employers: salary information") added Section 432.3 to the California Labor Code.

Assembly Bill 2282 ("Salary history information") amended Sections 432.3 and 1197.5 of the Labor Code to provide clarification on AB 168.

A brief summary of the changes brought about by AB 2282 is available on JDSupra: California Clarifies its Salary History Ban.

The California Labor Code is available on-line and you can use these links to read the text of Section 432.3 and of Section 1197.5

If you are a candidate, applying for a job in California:

• How do you see the recruiters you are working with handling your requests for compensation information?
  • Do they drop you like a hot potato?
  • Do they answer your questions, like a legitimate business partner?
• How do you see recruiters working from outside California dealing with this issue?
  • Do they even know that the law exists?
  • Do they care?

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Hackers breach HealthCare.gov system, get data on 75,000

A government computer system that interacts with HealthCare.gov was hacked earlier this month, compromising the sensitive personal data of some 75,000 people, officials said Friday.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the announcement late in the afternoon ahead of a weekend, a time slot agencies often use to release unfavorable developments.

Officials said the hacked system was shut down and technicians are working to restore it before sign-up season starts Nov. 1 for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

About 10 million people currently have private coverage under former President Barack Obama's health care law.

Consumers applying for subsidized coverage have to provide extensive personal information, including Social Security numbers, income, and citizenship or legal immigration status.

The system that was hacked is used by insurance agents and brokers to directly enroll customers. All other sign-up systems are working.

Also at Engadget and TechCrunch

Original Submission

martyb writes:

I first learned of GitHub having problems from a story on Hacker News. Since SoylentNews hosts its code there, I was curious as to what was going on. If it was indeed down, I wanted to pass the word on to the rest of the SoylentNews community.

The comments on that story suggested that GitHub read access was working okay (and a very quick check on my part of our code there confirmed that), but attempts to make changes are failing.

That's strange.

Then I took a look at GitHub's Status Page, where I found something even stranger... how they phrased their status messages! Take a look:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

22:42 Eastern Standard Time
We continue to repair a data storage system for GitHub.com. You may see inconsistent results during this process.
22:23 Eastern Standard Time
We are continuing to repair a data storage system for GitHub.com. You may see inconsistent results during this process.
22:01 Eastern Standard Time
We continue work to repair a data storage system for GitHub.com. You may see inconsistent results during this process.
21:41 Eastern Standard Time
We are continuing to work to migrate a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com.
21:22 Eastern Standard Time
We continue to work to migrate a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com.
21:02 Eastern Standard Time
We continue to migrate a data storage system in order to restore full access to GitHub.com.
20:43 Eastern Standard Time
We continue to work on migrating a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com.
20:23 Eastern Standard Time
We're continuing to work on migrating a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com.
20:05 Eastern Standard Time
We're failing over a data storage system in order to restore access to GitHub.com.
19:43 Eastern Standard Time
We're investigating problems accessing GitHub.com.
19:13 Eastern Standard Time
We are investigating reports of service unavailability.
19:09 Eastern Standard Time

Seems to me someone on GitHub once spent a little too much time exploring mazes in Colossal Cave. Will they be able to fix the problem before they run out of permutations?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Twitter publishes dump of accounts tied to Russian, Iranian influence campaigns

Twitter has released a data store of posts from 3,841 accounts that have been identified as being connected to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian "troll factory" that used Twitter and Facebook to conduct an "influence campaign" aimed at causing political turmoil during the 2016 US presidential election as well as undermining the political process in other countries, including Germany and Ukraine. The company has also released another set of data connected to 770 accounts believed to be connected with an Iranian influence campaign.

Totaling over 360 gigabytes—including more than 10 million tweets and associated metadata, and over 2 million images, animated GIFs, videos and Periscope streams—the data store provides a picture of how state-sponsored agencies have used the Twitter platform. Some of the content dates back as far as 2009.

In a post announcing the release, Twitter Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety lead Vijaya Gadde and Twitter's head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth wrote that Twitter was providing the data "with the goal of encouraging open research and investigation of [state-sponsored influence and information campaigns] from researchers and academics around the world."

The archive of the IRA's tweet metadata alone is 5.4GB of comma-separated data when expanded. In many cases, the user ID and screen name of many accounts—those with fewer than 5,000 followers—have been concealed with hash values to "reduce the potential negative impact on real or compromised accounts," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement on the data archive. The hash values still allow individual accounts to be analyzed without exposing the actual names associated with them.

[...] Gadde and Roth noted that Twitter expects these sorts of campaigns to continue and said that Twitter's Site Integrity team will "continue to proactively combat nefarious attempts to undermine the integrity of Twitter, while partnering with civil society, government, our industry peers, and researchers to improve our collective understanding of coordinated attempts to interfere in the public conversation."

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On 106 acres in Fishlake National Forest in Richfield, Utah, a 13-million-pound giant has been looming for thousands of years. But few people have ever heard of him.

This is "the Trembling Giant," or Pando, from the Latin word for "I spread." A single clone, and genetically male, he is the most massive organism on Earth. He is a forest of one: a grove of some 47,000 quivering aspen trees — Populus tremuloides — connected by a single root system, and all with the same DNA.

But this majestic behemoth may be more of a Goliath, suggests a study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE. Threatened by herds of hungry animals and human encroachment, Pando is fighting a losing battle.

The study, consisting of recent ground surveys and an analysis of 72 years of aerial photographs, revealed that this unrealized natural treasure and keystone species — with hundreds of dependents — is shrinking. And without more careful management of the forest, and the mule deer and cattle that forage within him, the Trembling Giant will continue to dwindle.

"It's been thriving for thousands of years, and now it's coming apart on our watch," said Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University who led the study.

How Pando got so big is a mystery. Perhaps it lived among other clones and became dominant over time. Or maybe the relatively flat land where it grows encouraged its spread. Maybe Pando just outcompeted other trees.